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John Oliver has mocked Donald Trump and JD Vance for their “beyond desperate” attempts to discredit Tim Walz’s military service, calling the “stolen valor” claims nothing more than “thin soup.”
In the show on Sunday evening Last week tonight The moderator addressed the Trump campaign’s recent efforts to steal the show from Kamala Harris and her running mate – efforts that he said have so far had no real impact on the Democrats’ quest for the White House.
“It is telling that much of their attack strategy seems to boil down to a nonsense word and false accusations of stolen bravery,” Oliver said.
“Two desperate attempts at smear with one common goal: to reveal that the Trump campaign has accomplished absolutely nothing at this point.”
The comedian pointed out that among the many attack methods tried by the Trump campaign, the accusations of “stolen bravery” against Walz in particular did not work.
“Even the extreme right Wall Street Journal The editors said that the allegations made against his military service so far looked like thin soup,” Oliver joked loudly The Daily Beast.
Vance accused the Minnesota governor of over-exaggerating his military career and abandoning his team immediately before deployment to Iraq.
In 2003, Walz spent nine months in the Afghanistan War, providing security at U.S. bases in Europe but did not participate in combat. He retired from the National Guard in May 2005 while running for Congress.
A year later, his unit was deployed to Iraq.
Republicans have also tried to attack Walz for his changes to Minnesota’s flag, claiming he altered it to resemble an autonomous state in Somalia.
After the previous flag was replaced due to its insensitivity towards Native Americans, the new flag features the same colour as the state of Puntland, blue and a star, which sparked a wave of dismay among Republicans.
Oliver pointed out how ridiculous this claim was and shouted: “What are you talking about? Have you seen Flags? They all consist of a combination of colors, stars, and in the case of Sicily, a three-legged monster with a head as a vagina.
“This is really more of a ‘Sicily becomes Sicily’ situation.”
Oliver further pointed out that Walz was not the key figure behind the flag change, but “happened to be governor at the time.”
The late-night host listed a number of other ineffective lines of attack from Trump and Vance, which overall showed that the campaign has “absolutely no control over” its rivals at the moment.
Oliver spoke of Trump’s “confusing” playground tactic of surprising Harris with a new nickname.
“Laffin’ Kamala,” “Lyin’ Kamala,” and “Crazy Kamala” have all popped up before, but when Trump ranted about “Kamabla” on Truth Social last week, Americans were truly baffled as to whether this was an intentional nickname or just an unfortunate misspelling.
“It is telling that much of their attack strategy seems to boil down to a nonsense word and false accusations of stolen bravery,” Oliver said.
“Two desperate attempts at smear with one common goal: to reveal that the Trump campaign has accomplished absolutely nothing at this point.”
The attempts to pull down Harris and Walz come at a time when Trump is reportedly in a nervous breakdown over his declining poll numbers, with Harris leading by two percentage points in the latest poll.
As Harris’ campaign continues to gain traction, with poll numbers rising and fundraising surging, Trump and Vance have come under fire for a series of attacks on their opponents.
Trump had come under criticism for questioning Harris’ ethnicity in remarks before the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) convention in Chicago on July 31.
Vance previously faced backlash after comments resurfaced in 2021 in which he called Harris and other Democrats “childless cat ladies.”
In an ABC News interview with Jonathan Karl on Sunday, he stood by his comments.
“Do I regret saying that? I regret that the media and the Kamala Harris campaign have, quite frankly, twisted what I said,” Vance said. “They’re turning it into a policy proposal that I never made.”
